Cross-Stitch

Charts, patterns and everything needlepoint

25 Days of Christmas Cross Stitch Freebies

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There are a lot of great old cross stitch patterns on the Internet, and a lot of good free content if you’re willing to dig around for it. 

I’ve had this link to a freebie page from Aurifil (which is a thread maker, apparently) for a long time, but I just clicked on it again recently and realized there was a whole set of little Christmas cross stitch patterns on it. 

They were originally presented as a Christmas in July project, but you can grab the whole set or any of them that you like to stitch up just in time for the holidays. 

There’s a whole array of projects, including: 

  • gingerbread person
  • Christmas dogs and cats
  • stockings
  • make a wish with an ornament and candy cane
  • Christmas hats
  • letters to Santa
  • snowflakes
  • reindeer
  • a traditional Santa and a surfing Santa
  • Christmas trees made out of different shapes (and other Christmas tree projects)
  • mistletoe
  • ornaments
  • Merry Christmas with holly

There’s also a set of blackwork designs that looks like stars or snowflakes you can use to fill in the background on a project or use as an allover design. 

The projects range in size and number of colors involved. The stockings one shown above, for example, uses five colors of thread and measures 46 by 44 stitches if I can count right. 

You can stitch these projects as they are or combine designs to make your own Christmas samplers. Or just stitch a portion, such as a single one of these stockings, to make a Christmas ornament or greeting card. 

You can grab all of these patterns, as well as a few other freebies, at the Aurifil website. Tip: click on the name of the pattern under the picture and it will automatically start a download of a PDF of the pattern. 

[Photo: Aurifill]

 

Have you read?

Designer Spotlight: Artmishka Cross Stitch

Artmishka Cross Stitch is an Etsy shop based in Italy with lots of whimsical and colorful designs and an emphasis on animals, flowers and landscapes. Let’s take a closer look!

The animal section is by far the largest, and it includes everything from realistic birds to cartoony cats, a set of little chick ornaments for Easter and a blackwork butterfly, to name a few. There are little animals in clothes and scarves, and this sweet folk art style owl in modern colors. 

This one (and lots of them, really, I think) was designed as nursery decor, and it calls for 10 colors, which you can of course change up to suit your decor, nursery or otherwise. The design is 95 by 95 stitches, which comes out to about 7 inches or 18 cm square on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave stitched over two strands. 

Another large category is flowers, which includes birth month flower designs, flowers that look hand drawn and colored, floral wreaths with teapots and wedding floral cross stitch designs.

The sampler section includes a variety of small patterns, images with words, colorful geometric and floral designs, and a few holiday patterns. Christmas designs include stamps, Christmas trees, stocking, snowmen and a cute box of snowflake shaped Christmas cookies in a box with a mug of hot chocolate, to name a few designs. 

There are also a fair number of designs in both the landscape and cottage categories. These include iconic landmarks and colorful sunsets, and buildings from beach houses to a mushroom cottage, book shop and a cottage with flowers bursting out of the roof. There’s also a section called girl, which has designs of a little girl in different outfits and situations and  some other characters.

Other categories on the site with smaller numbers of patterns include boy designs, princesses, plants, hobby themed designs (sewing, knitting, baking), art and bookmarks. There are also a handful of cross stitch kits, all of the little girl character. 

Check out all of the fun designs at Artmishka Cross Stitch. 

[Photo: Artmishka Cross Stitch]